Priti Patel’s Christmas card is both evil and delusional

Not a very charitable sentiment, especially for this time of year, I know, but Priti Patel really is obscene, isn’t she? I mean shamelessly, blatantly, boorishly obscene. She’s specially commissioned a personal Christmas card that depicts her as a fairy on a top of a tree groaning with lovely pressies.

Most are inscribed with the marks of shame of this Conservative government – Rwanda, expanded Taser use, the Nationality and Borders Bill, 12,000 FNOs (foreign national offenders) deported. None marked “food banks” or “child poverty”, mind you.

She also neglected to make reference to her proud record of bullying her civil servants, and the selfless way she attacked them for her own failings. Maybe next year she’ll go full Herod and claim the execution of the first born as another manifesto pledge fulfilled.

We knew she was heartless, but not that she revelled in it. And beneath the tree we find the infant Boris, looking like a cute little boy taking innocent pleasure in the festive scene, the kind any mum would like to cuddle, rather than the lying, priapic monster we know him to be. That really would be a novelty card.

If this hideous politician had been alive around 2,000 years ago she’d have dumped the undocumented Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in the Manston camp, oblivious to the risk of diphtheria, while they had their claim for refugee status rejected without proper consideration. Before the human rights lawyers of Bethlehem could lay a writ on Patel she’d have had them packed off to the ancient forerunner of modern-day Rwanda.

The Holy Land, she would have declared, “is full”, and “illegals” such as Joseph, no doubt looking for work in the joinery trade, had no right to come over, overwhelm local services and undercut the locals’ wages. Besides, he’d surely passed through plenty of safe havens before.

No right to a family life for his missus and the kid either, so off they also go to the mysterious lands south of the Empire of Abyssinia, who’ve been sent huge quantities of gold coin to take the holy family and other migrants away.

It’s all a bit delusional too, the Patel Christmas card. It’s presented like a newspaper cartoon. You’d be mistaken for thinking that she was still the home secretary, rather than an incompetent former one.

Even now she can’t resist bragging about her record in office. But her political career, miserably chequered as it was (sacked by two prime ministers), is now over, and she is no longer perched at the top of any tree.

Even the cartoonist couldn’t resist sticking her characteristic sneery smirk on her face, the angelic vibe deftly undermined. She can stick her magic wand.